Wild Swine from Chechen Woods Takes up Its Quarters in Novosibirsk Zoo

A wild swine has been handed over to the zoo of Novosibirsk (a regional centre in Western Siberia) by police who returned from a mission to Chechnya, one of the men said on Friday.

A wild swine young was found in the summer of 2002 in a forest while the police carried out a counter-terrorist special operation.

Its mother had been killed by a stray bullet, and the piglet would hardly have survived without human help, because it could not drink anything but mother's milk.

The men showed sympathy and took the animal to their headquarters, where it grew to maturity, got tame and became a general pet. When their mission was over the men decided to take Masha with them to Novosibirsk.

In the Novosibirsk Zoo the pig had an open-air cage prepared for it. The policemen vowed to look after Masha